The Ten Commandments scroll was added for the last 17 days of the exhibit "Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times," which also features 10 other scroll fragments from Israel. The scrolls are of great historical and religious significance because they include the earliest known surviving manuscripts of text included in the Hebrew Bible.

"The scrolls are important, not just religiously, but they are important historically and scientifically, because of the discovering and all that has gone into the preservation, so there is something here for anyone in our community to come and learn," museum spokeswoman Natalie Hastings said.

The Ten Commandments scroll is one of only two ancient manuscripts to feature the commandments, the foundation of Jewish and Christian religions. The other one, known as the Nash Papyrus, is at Cambridge University in England.

"It's really a once in a lifetime experience," Rabbi Jonathan Perlman said. "I think it's an incredible link to our past, to the history, just seeing that these religious ideals have been something so important for human civilization for centuries."

Written in Hebrew on a narrow strip of parchment, the scroll is believed to be between 2,010 and 2,060 years old. It is a reasonably well-preserved fragment, including one piece sewn onto another.

The scroll's arrival in Cincinnati is huge for the Museum Center, which has been negotiating with the Israel Antiquities Authority for months to show it.

"From the way they set up its restrictions for travel, this is their most protected," David Duszynski, the museum's vice president of featured experiences, told The Cincinnati Enquirer for a story Wednesday. "It was an opportunity that we couldn't resist bringing to Cincinnati."

Duszynski said the Antiquities Authority requires that this particular scroll be stored in darkness for one year after every 10 days of exhibition, although Cincinnati was able to get that display period extended to 17 days.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was in New York early last year, the Ten Commandments scroll was briefly displayed, but it was not part of the Philadelphia stop and will not be at the next venue, Boston. It has come to North America only twice before, to Toronto and San Diego.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near the ancient Israel desert settlement of Qumran, near the sea, in the 1940s and '50s. There are different theories as to who wrote them.

Hillary Clinton did not have a State Department email account while she served as America's top diplomat, a senior state department official said Monday, and instead used a personal email account during her four years on the job.